


closer than close

by faedemon



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Bets & Wagers, Character Study, Everlasting trio, F/M, Friendship/Love, Gen, Ghost Biology, Ghost Fight, Infidelity, M/M, Medical Examination, Obsessive Behavior, POV Outsider, References to The Ultimate Enemy, Serious Injuries, Sibling Love, Speculation, Worldbuilding, at least as far as can be expected of vlad in his home lab lol, implied infidelity, the infidelity has nothing to do with the trio dw, title inspired by an art piece by tumblr user punkhalfghosts, url in the notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:15:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22353961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faedemon/pseuds/faedemon
Summary: Only three people besides Sam and Tucker ever find out that Danny Fenton is Danny Phantom. This is a fact. Jasmine Fenton was always meant to know, and Vladimir Masters was always going to be Danny’s foil. Wes Weston was an accident, if a necessary one.A character study of sorts, concerning more than just the main trio.
Relationships: Danny Fenton & Jazz Fenton, Danny Fenton & Sam Manson, Danny Fenton & Tucker Foley, Danny Fenton & Tucker Foley & Sam Manson, Danny Fenton/Sam Manson, Danny Fenton/Tucker Foley, Danny Fenton/Tucker Foley/Sam Manson, Tucker Foley & Sam Manson, Tucker Foley/Sam Manson, implied vlad/walter
Comments: 48
Kudos: 161
Collections: my best fics





	1. so much for miscellaneous!

**Author's Note:**

> The art piece this fic is based off of can be viewed here: [closer than close](https://punkhalfghosts.tumblr.com/post/148379912542/closer-than-close).
> 
> In addition, this fic is cross-posted on FFN under the username faedemonn, and can be found [here](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13574578/1/closer-than-close).

_They_ are a unit, and they were of perfectly little note right up until October of freshman year. A person’s eyes will slide right over the faces they don’t know or care about, especially in the crowded halls of Casper High School, and so it was for them, even if one of their members was strikingly gothic, and another was the son of the town freakshow. They were the whatever-kids, the miscellaneous, and nothing happened to thrust them into the spotlight.

It was simply that one day—or over a period of days, a stretch of weeks, an adjustment period—they had or came to have a certain relevance that was unexplainable. A narrative importance. Something changed in their construction, their context; the boy at the center gained something that had its own sort of gravity, and those two at his sides were in his orbit. They began to draw people in. Valerie Gray interpreted the allure as love, and maybe it was. He really seemed to like her, after all. Dash Baxter tended to let only his fist succumb to that pull.

Suddenly they were drawing eyes. And it’s not like people knew their names, or cared, really, because they didn’t. She wasn’t _Samantha Manson_ but _the vegan chick_ and he wasn’t _Danny Fenton_ but _the Fenton’s son_ and _Tucker Foley_ was _that freak who names his electronics_ more than anything. But one day, inexplicably, students began to pick their faces out of crowds more easily. Eyes settled on those purple lips, those blue eyes ( _I thought they were green?_ ), that red beret. People began to _see_ them, whether they knew it or not.

Only three people ever find out that Danny Fenton is Danny Phantom. This is a fact. Jasmine Fenton was always meant to know, and Vladimir Masters was always going to be Danny’s foil. Wes Weston was an accident, if a necessary one.

The students at Casper High don’t see that particular part of him. Regardless of what Sam says, Danny _is_ good at hiding it, and the fact that no one expects a ghost and a boy to be the same entity definitely helps. No, it’s not the ghostliness that draws their eyes, though maybe that was the catalyst.

Instead it’s _them_. They as a unit, a trio, an inseparable three. It’s Manson _and_ Fenton _and_ Foley, it’s that you’ll never see a red beret not accompanied by a black ponytail or a plaid skirt by blue jeans or red sneakers by brown boots. It’s that there’s something in the way they look at each other—not just friendship but camaraderie, not just camaraderie but a shared something no one else can name.

Paulina Sanchez bets on how long it’ll take for Manson and Fenton to get together. Mikey Voss bets on Fenton and Foley. It’s only Jazz who gets it right, in the end, and the hefty sum of money she accrues goes straight toward Danny’s hopeful college fund.

It’s those three together, intertwined, a tangled lock of lips and limbs, because Danny can’t live without either of them and neither can they live without him or each other. They’re each other’s weaknesses and lifelines. It’s Manson loves Fenton loves Foley loves Manson, no one left out or behind, and they were always going to end up that way. 

A trio, a them, closer than close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! i love danny phantom so much. leave a comment if you liked it!! they mean a lot to me. :)
> 
> mikey's last name is borrowed from A Snapping Sound by Represent (or leda-x on tumblr i believe). this prologue of sorts is really short & kinda distinct from the rest of the fic because it was a drabble i wrote when trying to get into the dp mood, and expanded a story upon from there. this & the last chapter are the shortest. if you don't like this chap, give the rest a chance; they're more straight narrative-y than this one is.


	2. my brother's blood in your parlor.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jazz's view of the trio, and her own perceived failings as part of Team Phantom.

Jasmine Fenton is no stranger to fear, but the terror-worry that bites in her gut is always worse when it’s Danny.

He’s her little brother, her charge. She’s Big Sister Jazz, protector of baby Danny, and he’s out there being shot at, swiped at, cut through. And she’s here. Useless, guileless Jazz, who’s accidentally sucked Danny Phantom into his own thermos more than once. Useless, guileless Jazz, standing rooted to the cracked concrete sidewalk, watching the lightshow as ectoplasm ( _blood_ ) splatters the ground in wide, enchanting arcs. It shimmers like oil, unnatural in the sweet, burning sunset.

The ghost he fights is bigger than they’re used to, meaner. It hits harder. Jazz thinks she caught Sam talking into the Fenton phones, calling it _Salmacis_. It’s beautiful, in a horrific way. It’s a woman, sort of, serpentine and dripping with phantom water. It weaves and darts between buildings, lashing out at Danny as he tries his hardest to keep up. It slips like liquid through his every grip, and there’s only so many tricks he can pull, running as he is on about three hours of sleep and overexerted ecto-energy.

“Come on, Danny, come on,” she chants to herself, her scuffed flats immovable as she watches, enraptured. Most of Amity Park knows to run from ghost fights by now; the ones who don’t have just gotten a tad too comfortable. As it is, she—and Sam and Tucker, though they’re hidden—is alone, out in the center of the carnage. She’s the only one with a front-row seat. The only one to watch green cover the walls glowing, horrible in the wicked slashes it paints.

Salmacis is big as a small storefront, and Danny is so small. All his fighting has built him some muscle, and he’s grown in stature over the past four years, a far cry from his scrawny fourteen. Before this ghost, though, he’s a boy again, baby-faced and terrified. Before this ghost, running on nothing, he’s got the same grip on his powers he did then: next to none.

It is not a surprise—it’s awful, gut-wrenching, yes, but not surprising—when he goes down. And he goes down _hard_ , slammed by Salmacis’ tail, all muscle, into the side of an apartment building. If this were an action comic, he would’ve made a crater with the impact. As it is, this is real, and she’s watching, and all that happens is she hears the sickening slap of his back against the brick before he’s falling, crashing to the alley between the apartments and the tattoo parlor next door.

It’s faint enough that she knows no one else will have noticed it, and this is the smallest of mercies, but she sees it—the tell-tale gleam of his transformation reverting, his body becoming human to expedite his healing on the human plane. Danny Phantom has run out of juice.

Salmacis hovers victorious, still dripping, its open maw full of pointed, vicious fangs. Its great head swivels to look down at Jazz, the only person in sight for a block.

Jazz does not have a Fenton thermos on her. Nor does she have a wrist blaster, or a lipstick ray, or the Fenton Peeler, which she has gotten fucking good with, by the way. All she has are her teal yoga pants, black flats, and her cracked cell phone tucked into her pocket. Nothing that will help her. Nothing that will save her.

Then, as it lingers there in the air, letting Jazz’s fear mount, a comparatively tiny blast shoots toward it, hitting it in the side of the head, where an ear would be on a human. Salmacis whips to the side. Jazz follows its gaze. Across the street, ducked behind a parked car, Tucker crouches with an ectogun trained on Salmacis’ intimidating stature. Jazz nearly cries out a warning as it lunges, but fear keeps her voice locked tight.

It’s to her immense relief when she hears the signature sound of the Fenton thermos powering up, and a bright stream of light tugs at Salmacis’ form, sucking it into the small capsule too fast for it to turn back around. It’s Sam, just a few paces down the sidewalk from Jazz, hidden in a bush. Tucker had been her distraction.

Sam immediately stands and starts out into the street, beelining for the alley Danny had fallen into. She looks over her shoulder as she goes, making eye contact with Jazz. “You good?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Jazz replies after a moment, her tongue unsticking itself from the roof of her mouth. Sam nods, then continues on, Tucker meeting her as they weave their way between slabs of cracked and broken stone and asphalt. After a moment, Jazz remembers motion, and she follows after them like a faint shadow, heading toward Danny. Her baby brother, bleeding.

It is— _worse_ , significantly worse, than she expected it to be, when she gets there. Panic seizes Jazz as she gazes down upon his battered body, near entirely purple with bruising, dribbling (pouring) blood from cuts and scrapes and gashes, eyes closed, his breathing audible with the strain. Jazz’s hands rise to cover her mouth involuntarily, shock an unconscious impulse.

Sam and Tucker are similarly frantic, but they deal with it more productively than she does, frozen, staring. Sam’s pulled a shoddy first-aid kit from her purple spider backpack and is patching up what she can. Her wraps scream temporary, not even disinfecting the wounds. Tucker arranges Danny’s limbs into a transportable position. Once that’s accomplished, he grabs Sam’s car keys—she gives them up without contest—and speed-walks out of the alley to, presumably, pull Sam’s car up. She’d gotten it last year, when she turned sixteen. Since, it’s replaced their mopeds as their main mode of transportation. Jazz has heard Danny refer to it as the ‘getaway mobile’ more than once.

Fuck, it’s hard to think of him so endearingly right now.

“Jazz,” Sam says, and something in her tone snaps Jazz out of whatever trance she’d fallen into. There’s something about her voice: this sharp, violet, no-nonsense pressure. It startles Jazz into action, and she follows Sam’s directions as if on autopilot. “Grab his legs. I’ll get his shoulders. We’re going to put him in my backseat.”

“Okay,” she replies, her voice small even to her own ears. The smooth hum of Sam’s engine fills the alleyway as Tucker pulls up. “Okay.”

Four years of ghost hunting and her limbs are still locking up. As she moves Danny’s body with Sam’s help, hefts it into the back of a teenager’s car, she thinks—four years, a thousand fights, countless hours with the Fenton peeler pressed tight to her sweating skin, and she’s still locking up. She knows this routine. She knows Danny’s taunts, the choreography of his fights. She knows how to patch him up after. She knows Tucker and Sam’s supportive maneuvers. She’s done this song and dance and she—

She’s still standing on that sidewalk, wide-eyed, afraid.

Sam drives. Tucker takes the front seat, and Jazz sits in the back with Danny’s head in her lap. She strokes his hair, matted with dirt and blood and ectoplasm, and whispers reassuring things more for herself than him. Sam heads for her house; Pamela and Jeremy are out of town for an environmental law conference. Sam had wanted to go. She’s probably glad she stayed; it would have killed her to be too far away to help.

“Big wet bitch,” Sam is saying, her hands clenched on the steering wheel. Jazz barely registers it, her gaze locked on the blood in Danny’s hair. “If Danny weren’t so tired, he’d have wiped the floor with her. She got lucky.”

They pull into the Mansons’ ridiculous driveway, and this time both Tucker and Sam help carry Danny inside. They don’t get farther than the parlor, where they settle Danny carefully onto a couch far too expensive to justify staining with blood. None of them particularly care; the Mansons can afford to replace it, and Sam’s always all for wasting her parents’ money.

“Sam, get some water and a few washcloths. I’m going to go upstairs and grab the big kit. It has disinfectant in it, right?” Tucker says, taking charge. He’s always been the most competent of them when it comes to first aid. Sam nods, then gets up from where she’d been kneeling beside the couch.

“Jazz, could you get him out of some of his clothes, so we know there aren’t any injuries we’re not seeing?” Tucker asks her. That’s—yes. She has a job. She can do it.

“Yeah,” Jazz says, nodding, and then reaches back to tie her hair up.

Tucker and Sam both head out of the room, Tucker for the upstairs bathroom and Sam for, presumably, the kitchen. A goal now in mind, Jazz sets herself to peeling back Danny’s overshirt, then his shirt, then, where necessary, his jeans.

He has a substantial scrape on his side that’ll need disinfecting, but isn’t deep. He has some bite punctures on his left arm, and his right calf. His thighs and waist are alright—it’s a relief to be able to save him some modesty—but his feet are scraped, and he has bruises all over his chest, back, and going up his neck. She takes his overshirt all the way off, feeling bad for having to manhandle his unconscious form to do it, and removes his jeans. His calf injuries could be attended to with them still on, but they’d have to cut away part of his pant leg or risk cutting off his circulation by rolling it up.

“Okay,” she murmurs to herself, sitting back on her heels and looking him over. She hears Tucker’s feet coming back down the stairs. Sam’s still in the kitchen.

Smoothing back some of Danny’s hair, Jazz looks him over, biting her lip. As proud as she is of her brother—and she _is_ proud, truly—she hates seeing him like this. One day he might not come back from it. The thought terrifies her.

There’s still blood in his hair. Frowning, Jazz stands. As Tucker reenters the parlor, his pace swift, she turns to him. “He has wounds on his right side, his left arm, right calf, and his feet. Lots of bruising. I’d have checked on his ribs, but I wouldn’t know what to look for.” She glances at him, then continues, “I’m going to get some water of my own to clean up his hair. You probably don’t want to wait to let him shower before you bandage him up.”

“That’d be great,” Tucker says, and she can tell he means it, but impatience is writ in his stance. He’s itching to get back to Danny, to help him. “Thanks, Jazz.” He doesn’t waste any more time, kneeling at Danny’s side and lifting his shirt, going for the scrape first since it isn’t bloody enough to wait for Sam to mop it up.

Jazz passes Sam on her way out of the kitchen. She’d boiled water to sterilize it, and now carries a big pot with washcloths hung over its lip. She doesn’t even acknowledge Jazz as she paces by, eyes dead-set on the parlor doorway.

Sam and Tucker’s single-minded devotion to Danny catches Jazz off-guard, sometimes. She knows, logically, how long they’ve stuck around and how much they’ve stuck through; she knows that to have done so requires a certain amount of dedication. She’s seen their love of him in their sweaty palms clutched tight around each other, in Tucker’s forehead pressed to the covers at Danny’s bedside, in Sam’s smudged make-up, days old. In Danny, standing with them behind him, shielding them from the worst of everything—ghost attacks, yes, but high school, too. Everything they could possibly need protection from. Danny has a saving-people thing, but Sam and Tucker have a thing for saving _him_ , evidenced in all the countless times they’ve practiced this routine: fight, fall, repair, repeat.

Jazz knows that she is the big sister. The nuisance, sticking her nose in her little brother’s business. But they’ve had four years of experience doing this job together, and she’s still an outsider.

She gets the water, then grabs a mini shampoo bottle from one of the first-floor bathrooms that has a shower—rich people—and heads back to the parlor, preparing herself to see him again, laid out like a corpse as Sam and Tucker while the minutes away, treating his injuries, pulling him back together.

(Sometimes she wonders what would happen if he got hurt so bad he couldn’t take it. Would he collapse like ghosts do? Would his human body die? Would he become a ghost proper, or would he vanish? What would happen? What will happen?)

(She tries not to think on it too long.)

When she reenters the parlor, Tucker is on his knees, spreading ointment over the scrapes on Danny’s feet. Sam has unwrapped the wounds she’d temporarily bandaged, and is dabbing one of her cloths at one of them, blood still welling from the gouge. Big, white patches have been stuck over the scrape on his side; his shirt is still pushed up enough for Jazz to see them. And he’s still out cold, brow relaxed, but something of the pain he’s in visible on his features all the same.

Sam is whispering lowly, and, though Jazz can’t hear any of what she’s saying, she can take a guess. Sam’s purple eyes are red-rimmed. She sniffles, but her hands are steady, and every firm yet gentle motion she makes drips with a certain compassion. A knowing, an understanding, an _I-have-been-here-since-the-beginning-and-I’ll-be-here-for-the-end._ Jazz has watched Sam love Danny, from best friend to more than to in-between, an equal, and she sees its epitome now: in the blood Sam wipes from his wounds, in the way her lip trembles but her hand does not.

Tucker is bandaging Danny’s wounds with a precise, practiced hand. It’s not quite gentle, but efficient, and this is the form Tucker’s care takes: necessary more than kind, loving more than admonishing. Sam is the one who’ll tear into him for his carelessness, for walking into a fight he had to have known he’d lose. Tucker is the one who’ll wrap his arms around Danny’s shoulders and hang there, minding his injuries, and say _I’m glad you’re okay_. He will not say, _you were so brave_ , because Danny was brave and it didn’t matter. Tucker will say, _I’m glad you’re here with us_ , and it’ll mean that much more.

And Jazz will be there, too. Watching them, those three, limbs intertwined so closely they could be one entity, like Salmacis and Hermaphroditus were, but without the coercion. This is a consensual singularity: three teenagers doing up each other’s stitches, and pulling them out when the wound has closed.

Jazz inhales, lets it all out in one breath. Then she kneels, and reaches for Danny’s hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you liked it! please leave a comment if you did :)
> 
> i wanted to play with the disparity in how jazz and the trio view the ghosts in this one. she consistently refers to Salmacis as an 'it' because she, despite her best interests, doesn't see her as an individual the way danny & co do. so the trio refers to her as a 'she' because they do.


	3. he, like my unwilling reflection—

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vladimir Masters tends to ignore Daniel's little friends, but on a surprise visit, they make it so he can't ignore them.

It hadn’t taken Vlad Masters more than a year to realize how childish it was to antagonize a teenager. It took him less time than that to acknowledge that he really shouldn’t keep up such enmity, when he and Daniel were two of a kind (save Danielle, but she’s never been quite the same). It pays to have an ally in the only other person who can share your experiences.

They are not— _friends_. It’s hardly even an allyship, really, though they’re trying to work their way there. It’s more a sporting rivalry; they antagonize each other, but not with the same venom. He’d say it’s almost fond, on his end, if he were willing to acknowledge that.

They aren’t _close_ , though, so when young Daniel Fenton shows up on his doorstep, Samantha and Tucker in tow, it is rather a surprise.

“Daniel?” he asks, shifting his gaze between the three of them. They are not fidgeting in the way that children who have done something wrong and are trying to hide it are wont to do, but these particular children would probably be adept at hiding such tells, anyway. No, they look almost worried. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“You could say that?” he replies, and it’s more a question than a statement. “Can we come in?”

“I suppose,” Vlad acquiesces, stepping back to allow them entry. The three of them shuffle in, Vlad’s butler closing the door behind them and exiting without needing to be directed to—Vlad loves his staff, truly; they know their roles well—as he stands before the trio and waits for them to state their purpose.

There’s the expected exchange of nervous glances before Samantha, clearly fed up, rolls her eyes and steps forward. “We have questions about halfa biology. You’ve studied yourself, right?” Vlad’s eyebrows raise.

“What, specifically, are you asking about?” he asks delicately, and sends Tucker a sharp look when the boy snickers, his mind clearly in the gutter.

Samantha nudges Daniel, who huffs a sigh and glances around the foyer before transforming. Vlad’s eyebrows raise further as he reaches up to tug his lips back, baring his teeth, showing off a distinct, though not prominent, set of fangs.

“Why is he growing them now?” Samantha asks. “That’s not the only thing, either.” She pokes Daniel again, who, reluctantly, sticks out his tongue. It’s thinner than a human’s should be, and at the end, it seems as though it’s beginning to split.

“Interesting,” Vlad says without really being aware he speaks it. He’s slipping into his scientist mindset; before him is no longer Maddie’s son but a curiosity, an opportunity for research.

( _An experiment,_ he thinks automatically. He pushes this thought away. He… values Daniel too much for that.)

“Come with me.” Vlad gestures them all to trail behind him without offering further explanation. He leads them to the fireplace, above which stands his golden football-shaped lever. Pulling it—and resisting the urge to hide its purpose; it’s not as though the children don’t already know of it—he leads them down the short, sterile steel steps into his ectobiological laboratory.

His lab is spotless, as all places of scientific study should be. Apart from the counters and wheeled table in the center of the room, the walls are lined with shelving and cold storage, on and in which lie scientific instruments, ectoplasm samples, research notes. There are tools meant for dissection, inspection, analysis. There are books of notes concerning ghost biology, and a fair few more concerning halfa biology, or at least what he’s been able to glean from his own body—there is a disappointingly small sample size to observe, and it’s not as though he can dissect himself. Once he might have toyed with the idea of dissecting Danielle, but Daniel would flay him if he did, and none of the other clones were stable enough (perfect enough) to even attempt such an operation.

“Sit,” Vlad orders, patting the table in the middle. He locks its wheels so that it will not roll, and then moves off to grab a magnifying glass. On his way back, he grabs some of his notes as well.

Daniel, still in his ghost form, has obeyed him and hopped up onto the table, though he looks supremely uncomfortable. Samantha and Tucker stand by, watching him, their eyes hawk-like. Neither of Daniel’s young friends have quite gotten over their distrust of him, and he wouldn’t expect them to. His and Daniel’s tentative relationship has broken down a few times in the past three years. The road has been more than rocky.

“Open your mouth,” he says, and Daniel does, though his discomfort visibly mounts. Vlad reaches for his face, then, pausing, steps back to pull on a pair of nondescript medical gloves before repeating the motion. Daniel appears minutely more willing to be touched with the gloves on.

Gently, Vlad takes the boy’s face in his hands and pulls back his lip, gazing at the teeth in question. It’s not just them, though they are the most noticeable—his smaller teeth, to either side of those concerned, are steadily sharpening, to accommodate for the new shape and function of the initial four. Vlad picks up the magnifying glass, using it to look more closely.

Because ghosts are made up of ectoplasm and intention, their bodies are far less complex than living beings’; he need not examine Daniel down to the molecular, and there are no cells to examine at all. Rather, he can watch with a mere magnifying glass as the physical form Phantom takes re-shapes itself, gradually but steadily.

It is possible to intentionally change one’s physical appearance as a ghost, all at once. Most ghosts don’t, comfortable in the appearance they had formed with. Daniel’s body, however, is changing independently of his will. It’s quite akin to the way young ghosts grow—as their consciousness asserts itself, it slowly determines what shape is most comfortable. The phenomenon is why all ghosts start as green blobs. It’s entirely likely that, because Daniel is still growing up, and his own perception of himself is in flux, his ghost form is changing to reflect that. A short, similar examination of Daniel’s tongue reveals the same.

“Would you like the short answer, or the long answer?” Vlad asks, stepping back, peeling his gloves off and disposing of them.

“Short,” Daniel says, at the same time Samantha says, “Long.” Vlad’s lip quirks in amusement.

“Well, in short, you’re going through puberty,” he tells them, and it’s with quite some pleasure that he watches Daniel’s brain buffer, taking that statement in. His cheeks color—the green blushing is always a tad startling to Vlad, no matter how many times he sees it, in the mirror or otherwise—and Vlad smirks.

“Um, long, please,” Daniel says. It’s closer to a squeak than words.

“You, being a teenager, do not have a fully mature ghost form. If I’m correct, and I’m quite sure I am, Phantom’s appearance will continue to change until your self-image is more stable, which will likely not be until your mid to late twenties.” Vlad glances at Samantha and Tucker. He hadn’t been paying much attention to them, but the same was clearly not true for them. They seem to hang on to his every word, each paying more rapt attention than Vlad would expect Daniel himself to pay. “As you’ve gained a solid grasp on your power and limits, I hypothesize that you’ve come to view yourself as more dangerous. Your form is changing to reflect that, though why it views fangs and a forked tongue as intimidating, I do not know. It’s likely subconscious.”

He refocuses on Daniel, and stops. The boy is pale, his mouth shut tight. Tucker moves over from where he’d been hovering to stand next to him, his side pressed to Daniel’s knee.

“Is there something I do not know?” Vlad asks, his voice low.

“Yes, and it’s none of your business, fruit loop,” Samantha hisses, belatedly coming to stand on Daniel’s other side. She places a hand on his knee, turning fully away from Vlad to lean in and whisper something soothing. Daniel ignores it.

“It kinda is his business, though,” Daniel says, and a strangled chuckle escapes him. He does not elaborate.

“They’re not the same and you know it, Danny,” Tucker says, shooting a glance at Vlad before placing his attention firmly on Daniel. “Come on, we should go.” He tries to tug the boy out of his stupor, but stops when Vlad places a hand on his shoulder.

“I really would rather you not leave before I understand the issue,” he insists coldly. At the change in his tone and posture, both Samantha and Tucker turn to face him, Tucker shaking off Vlad’s hand. Both of their expressions harden, their body language clearly shielding Daniel, protecting him. It would be cute, if Vlad were not so irritated. Despite the power imbalance, they still move to hide him, as if they could do anything against a half-ghost on their own.

“Like she said. It’s none of your business,” Tucker says in a voice as dangerous as he can make it. If Vlad were thirteen, maybe it’d be scary. But Tucker is so very small compared to Vlad, and a human is so fragile compared to a ghost.

They’re both prepared to fight him. Physically, without weapons—for of course he’d checked they were unarmed when they came in—and without any strategy, on _his_ home turf, they’re prepared to take him on. For Daniel, over some tidbit of information Vlad wants to know.

Their resolution is startling enough to make Vlad take a mental step back, reassessing the situation. Samantha’s hand is still on one of Daniel’s knees, Tucker’s hip still pressed to the other. Daniel has either shut down or is willfully ignoring the situation; given the unlikeliness of the latter, Vlad’s sure it’s the former. He’s comfortable enough with them to cede control, despite his marked tendency to take responsibility even, and especially, where he does not have to. This is more than concealing something medical. Daniel’s friends are prepared to lay down everything to protect not just Daniel, but something he knows. Judging from his present state, something he doesn’t want to dredge up.

Vlad sighs, and physically steps back, in a gesture that is closer to _being the bigger person_ than giving in. Samantha and Tucker, both bristled like cats, don’t relax, but Daniel does, visibly so. As his attention shifts to the boy, so do Samantha and Tucker’s, and they shoot wary glances back at Vlad before turning fully to Daniel.

“Danny?” Tucker murmurs, and it’s like he wakes up.

“I’m good,” Daniel mutters back, blinking, clenching his hands into fists. “It’s—I’m alright. Don’t kill him.” It’s clearly meant to be a joke, but there’s some seriousness to it. 

Vlad does not doubt that, if Daniel asked, his friends would genuinely commit murder for him. This should be a startling realization. As it is, though, Vlad has long been more comfortable than is right with the concept of death, and Daniel would never ask for such a thing anyway, what with how he plays at being the hero.

“Vlad?” Daniel meets his eyes.

“Yes?”

“Did—was Plasmius formed differently? Or have you always looked like that?”

Once, this might have been a personal question. Vlad might’ve refused to answer, thinking that the factor of intimidation he’d tried so hard to cultivate would be lost with the knowledge. Even now, he feels a strange reluctance to give it away.

But the way Daniel is looking at him—pleading, begging, this desperate hope for understanding, the root of which Vlad could not know—is arresting. Of course Vlad’s going to tell him. It’s like he knew all along that he would.

“My ghost form was different, initially,” he says, nodding. “Plasmius wore the hospital gown, colors inverted like your jumpsuit, that I had on when I succumbed to my ecto-acne. It was not an immediate change, after the portal. My hair was down, as well, and my eyes looked more like yours—only the iris was red.”

“And your skin?’ Daniel asks, voice small.

“My skin was always blue,” he says. Daniel cringes, though from what, Vlad does not know.

“What changed?”

“An emaciated man in a hospital gown does not exactly inspire fear, little badger,” Vlad says, and Daniel chuckles, just slightly. The sound makes all of them relax; Vlad hadn’t been aware how much the tension was once again rising. “I wanted to appear more intimidating. I willed them to change, and they did.”

Daniel’s eyes widen. “You can do that?”

“ _I_ could. As far as I can tell, though, it’s a talent reserved for mature ghosts. Younger spirits—and by that I mean recently formed ones, true age isn’t usually a factor—tend not to be able to control the changes, since they’re still in flux. I assume the same would apply to you,” Vlad says, and he deflates a little.

“Oh.”

They stand around awkwardly, then, nothing else to say. After a moment, Samantha takes a breath, and says, “We should go.”

“Yeah,” Tucker agrees, quickly. He reaches up to tug at Daniel’s wrist, who follows the motion without complaint, sliding off the table and to the floor. He detransforms, and Samantha and Tucker both make for the door, him not far behind. Vlad just watches them go, sure they can find their way out. Then, at the stairs, Daniel stops, and turns back around.

“Sorry to bother you with this,” he says suddenly, uncharacteristically. Samantha and Tucker pause on the stairs, too.

Vlad says nothing.

“I’ll tell you eventually, I think,” Daniel continues, though his face is twisted like he would rather do anything else.

“Go home, Daniel,” Vlad says quietly. The silence in the laboratory afterward is ringing.

His gaze is drawn up to Samantha and Tucker, who look not at Daniel but at him. There’s something different, now, in the way they’re regarding him. He doesn’t know what prompted it, or what convinced them. But the air is less hostile. The tension in their postures has just slightly uncurled.

“Come on, Danny,” Tucker says softly, turning to start upwards once more.

And despite all the nameless things it seems Daniel wants to say, without reluctance, he goes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey!!! hope you guys like this chapter. leave a comment if you did!
> 
> in this one, i wanted to emphasize the fact that vlad refers to danny and sam with their full names, as well as the fact that (at least in my head) danny and vlad both view their human selves as their Self, and their ghost forms as a persona, as opposed to an equal part of their Self. also: if you didn't get it, this chapter is Heavily alluding to the whole dan phantom situation.
> 
> it's often neglected that dan would be vlad's future, too, if in less of a direct capacity. also that he contributes features & personality to dan's Final Form! i hashed it out like this:
> 
> danny: hair color, suit design, teeth, tongue, eye shape  
> vlad: goatee, cape, ears, skin, eye color
> 
> i figured dan's hair would probably be a combination of their traits; vlad's headcanoned fire core being a main contributor. :)


	4. my worst thing.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wes Weston is not wrong. He can't be wrong.

Wesley Weston is a lot of things. Crazy is not one of them. Delusional is not one of them, no matter how many people spit out that descriptor. Maybe “freak” is true, and maybe “obsessed” is right. But Wes Weston is not _wrong_.

Daniel James Fenton—whose middle name Wes had fished from a first-grade name-writing assignment that had been tossed during spring cleaning—is Danny Phantom. They are one and the same. His “human” classmate is dead, and no one— _no one_ will listen. Has ever listened!

He’s been pursuing this stupid conspiracy for a year and a half, after he’d spotted Fenton entering an alley Phantom had come shooting out of just before the start of their junior year. Oh, Wes had had his suspicions before that—what else does one do in homeroom, staring off into space, other than theorize why random classmates take so many bathroom breaks?—but he’d never truly _believed_ the idea. It was just too far-fetched to have any real weight.

But then Danny Phantom came from where Danny Fenton had been, and Wes had zeroed in on it. He had known. He had seen the connection, and there was the proof, before his eyes.

But no one would listen.

Wes learned quickly that spouting off his far-fetched theories would not win him any favors. In fact, the most it got him was a one-way ticket to guidance, so he could talk to his counselor first about slander, and how we do and don’t talk about classmates, and then delusions, since she thought he was off his rocker. Which was fine. He didn’t really expect anybody to believe him, not at first.

But no amount of evidence-gathering seemed to convince anyone. No amount of blurry photographs or logical progressions or circumstantial evidence got him anywhere. _No one_ could find it remotely possible to believe that slim, scrawny Danny Fenton could be their hero, least of all Paulina Sanchez, who claimed to be madly in love with him.

Fenton isn’t even scrawny anymore! He has muscle! _From ghost fighting!_

It’s gotten to the point where Wes is convinced that something unnatural is interfering. Phantom himself, maybe. No matter how nuts you think Wes is, no matter how completely you look down on him, at a certain point you have to concede the idea. At a certain point you can’t just keep on denying it.

Wes is not stupid, or delusional. The proof he has is proof enough to convince most people. And it hasn’t.

No one believes him.

(Because—and you’ll remember this, if Wesley does not—they’re the star players, remember? The narrative circles them. They draw eyes, and despite all the watchers, no one figures it out. It’s main character immunity. You always knew it was.)

It’s infuriating.

Wes is not good at being wrong, or being told he is wrong, and not in that petty way of arguing with teachers, trying to convince them _he_ got the problem right, it’s _them_ who made the mistake, though he’s done a lot of that, too. It’s more so that he’s seen far too many things laid out before him, plainly betrayed to his prying eyes, and been told he’d seen wrong. It was a trick of the light, a misunderstanding, _you’ve got it all wrong, son. Your mother and I love each other. He was here on business._

Wes is not good at being wrong, and he is not wrong, and he needs someone to confirm it for him. Just—just one person. Just one, single, individual human being to agree. That’s all it would take.

He approaches Valerie Gray first. Former A-Lister, two-times local kickbox champion, old flame of Fenton, and a girl who _hates_ ghosts. She’s a perfect target, he thinks: chipped down enough to stoop to talking to the weedy basketball kid, bitter enough to be willing to believe a bad break-up was more than her fault.

Instead, she punches him in the face, muttering something about Danny being _a hell of a lot sweeter than that ass of a ghost_ , and hurries away.

She does not believe him.

After a lot of miscellaneous people in between, next is Jazz Fenton, who is… admittedly not ideal; she was the most outspoken ghost skeptic before the attacks began in earnest, and she adores Fenton enough that the whole school gets to bear witness to her overbearing older sister routine almost weekly. But she’s also very logical, very intelligent, and honestly, if she saw, really _saw_ the things Fenton was getting into, she’d want to protect him, right? She should want to protect him.

She graduated three years ago, but she’s hung around Amity—god knows why—and he manages to catch her one day, when she comes to pick up Fenton from detention. She’s waiting on him in the parking lot, the asphalt empty and quiet. He presents it all before her: his hands splayed open with the evidence on his palms, desperate words spilling between his fingers. Jazz just creases her brows, bites her lip. She gives him this soft, regretful look that says, _you stupid, delusional boy_ , and he remembers she’s not a kid anymore in the same way he is. She looks at him the way his guidance counselor did: where can I put you? Which psychiatrist can I refer you to?

Wes leaves first, before she has the chance to psychoanalyze him, or punch him.

He tries Fenton’s friends, though they’re his last resort. He knows before he even draws their eye that this won’t end the way he wants it to. Not that they won’t believe, but that it won’t matter whether they do or don’t. Either they know and are helping Phantom or they don’t and they’re loyal to Fenton anyway; they’re not going to entertain his mad, raving cautions. He goes anyway.

He tackles Tucker Foley first, because Tucker Foley is leagues less intimidating than Sam Manson, and Wes could definitely (probably? Foley’s gained muscle, too) beat him up.

When he approaches Foley, the guy regards him with such an intensely fed-up stare Wes almost turns right back around and leaves. Wes knows, with certainty, that Tucker Foley already has his shtick memorized, has seen all his material, has paid for tickets to the show, and he isn’t impressed. Foley knows what’s coming, and nothing Wes can do will make him bend.

It’s strange, knowing something so completely and certainly without real understanding of why, and acting anyway.

He says, “Foley. Your friend’s dead,” or something similar. Something direct, like if Wes gets it out fast enough, the switch will flip in Foley’s mind. Instead, all he does is lift an incredulous eyebrow.

“Is he now?” Foley drawls, and this—this is a tone Wes has not heard from him before. There are a lot of voices a teenager will take: some to impress, or to beat down, or to implore. Very few at a public high school will head straight for disdain in the way Foley drips with it; the lack of opinion he holds of Wes is almost palpable. In Manson, it might not have been so jarring, but in Foley—renowned awful flirt, socially inept techno-freak?

It’s like throwing your arms around someone you think you know in public, only to find it’s a stranger with a similar haircut.

“Save it for the conspiracy club, Wes,” Foley tells him, and he throws everything into a new, sharp, foreign focus. This Tucker Foley is greater than Wes knew he was. This Tucker Foley has to be Phantom’s right-hand, because where else would he have gotten this sudden, oppressive self-confidence? Where else did he find this steel?

“But—” Wes doesn’t know what he thinks he’s going to say. It’s almost a relief when Foley cuts him off.

“Stay the hell away from Danny. He’s not dead, and we’re all tired of your shit. Find something else to obsess over.” While Wes struggles to find something to retort with, Foley snickers to himself. “Hah, obsess. You know, Wes, it’s almost like _you’re_ the ghost.”

Wes swallows back whatever he’d been about to say. Foley—this Foley, who stands like a shield before Danny Fenton, whose green eyes narrow with an iron strength Wes’ words can’t melt, who Wes’ eyes catch in the hallways, always one-third—is a far cry from a nerd at the bottom of the pecking order.

This Tucker Foley is indomitable.

He tries Sam Manson next. She’s the last resort, the end-all, be-all of this entire crusade. If Sam Manson does not believe him, he’ll never get anywhere, because whether she knows it or not she’s the sleeping leader of this god-forsaken school. People follow her lead. They might not like her or agree with her, but she draws a crowd—who could forget her and Foley’s protest-off freshman year?—and people love to have a cause to fight for. She’d campaign against the ghost if he weren’t her best friend. Casper High would rally behind her.

But, against everything, Danny Fenton _is_ her best friend. Her more-than, her star. She’s in his orbit, like Foley is, like Valerie Gray and Jazz Fenton and Dash Baxter are, and Wes feels like he’s the only one who can resist that pull.

(He can’t. He doesn’t realize the way you and I do that this conspiracy is surrender, too.)

He goes to her in one of the rare moments she isn’t flanking Fenton, when he and Foley have gotten themselves stuck in detention again and Manson’s waiting to bail them out. He approaches her, photos clutched tight in one shaking grip, and she, like Foley, already knows what he wants, what he’ll say. The gaze she fixes him with is not disdainful in the way Foley’s was, and it both is and isn’t worse.

The gaze she fixes him with is hatred incarnate. She’s not dismissing him, she just despises him, that violet fire licking at her irises like threat. It both is and isn’t worse to be hated. It both is and isn’t worse to be waved off.

“Manson,” he says, and this is the wrong way to address her. Her lip curls, and her gaze hardens, if that’s even possible. Stupid. He knows (everyone knows) how much she hates her family. It’s _Sam_ , not Samantha, and it’s not Manson, it’s Sam.

“The hell do you want, _Weston_ ,” she says, addressing him in turn. Oh, he doesn’t like that. It calls up his father’s silhouette, speaking to him, reassuring him with white-lie words, _just business, Wes, just business_. That man was Weston before he was.

Wes glares back, and says, “Stop hanging around Fenton,” as if it’ll do anything to dissuade her. He knows by now how this goes. He’s done this song and dance, but he just—

He can’t let it go.

“You want to be right so bad, don’t you?” she says, with that exasperated kind of anger Wes has heard far too often before. It’s like she can’t believe he’s _this_ pitiful. He’s a worm under her shoe, though she wouldn’t press down. She’d kick him back into the dirt and keep going. He’s nothing.

He can’t let it go.

“You have to be the best in everything, huh? You have to be right about everything, and you have to be right about this.” Manson glares at him, and glares, and Wes feels small. But he doesn’t feel wrong.

“Aren’t I?” he says, breaking script. His voice is plaintive, a weak plea. “If anyone knows, it’s you and Foley. Aren’t I right?”

Sam Manson is indomitable in the same way Tucker Foley is. She’s got her back to Danny Fenton and she’s a fortress, her combat boots like bricks and her joints the mortar. She’s great, taller than him in spirit if not body, a wall in the prison yard no inmate can scale.

She and Foley aren’t Fenton’s bodyguards, really. They’re closer to Saturn’s asteroid belt: a dangerous, circling barrier. They keep the world away from Fenton and fling barbs when anyone’s spacecraft gets too close, and here the barbs stick into Wes, and he bleeds, sluggish and cold.

“You’ll never know,” Sam Manson tells him.

It’s in slow motion that Wes watches her walk away, after this. She leaves to head down the hallway toward the door to the detention classroom, which opens as she approaches it. From it, Foley and Fenton emerge, grinning at each other as if sharing a joke. Behind them, Mr. Lancer, today’s supervisor, shoos them away with good-natured if exasperated hurry. Foley and Fenton both greet Manson immediately, showering her with chatter. Wes does not hear any of it.

Instead he watches them arrange themselves: Foley on Fenton’s left, Manson on his right. Fenton in the middle, always. They press themselves against his sides, almost too close to walk, but they’ve been making this formation since freshman year. Fenton doesn’t even seem to notice the way they close in on him, in his orbit. These are his satellites: a goth girl and a tech freak, both of them—and Wes can see it now—a little in love with him.

Fenton is radiant. He almost glows—he is taller now than he was as a freshman, if not noticeably tall, and he’s built enough muscle that it’s noticeable in his arms, though his shirt still hangs baggy on his frame. He’s got scars criss-crossing his skin, even up his neck and onto his face, but it only accentuates him. He’s content, Wes can see it. This Danny Fenton is a far cry from who he was as a freshman: timid, exhausted, overwhelmed. Wes had seen him then and he sees him now.

This Danny Fenton is strength incarnate, and he doesn’t need a shield, not really. Manson and Foley act as his barriers anyway. Loyalty incarnate.

And Wes is enraptured. And it is not good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!!!! leave a comment if you liked it :>
> 
> i love wes, our baby fandom oc, so you know i had to include him. for this chapter, i made a couple different choices--first, to have Wes refer to others by their last or full names, to distance himself from others. second, i needed to give wes motivation for his actions, so i decided to incorporate that old idea about wes' dad, walter, banging vlad. because that was hilarious, and it's a good way to worm in wes' fixation on being right.
> 
> i said originally this fic was only going to have four chapters, but i think i'm actually going to write another one to close the fic out the way the first chapter opened it! stay tuned :)


	5. here's to who you've been!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is Daniel James Fenton, in twin images:

This is Daniel James Fenton, in twin images:

A night sky that’s starless. Scrawny, slim, and eternal. He’s a wisp in your grip, your great sweaty palms that squeeze. The pinkish-purplish gaseous galaxies that swirl up there are _your_ doing. Your bruises, pressed loving into his soft white flesh. But he gets away, he always does, slipping from you like you could never hold on tight enough. This laughing silhouette is at best nothing, in the grand scheme of it. A pocket of black void.

And the expanse of one bright, burning sun. Larger than anything in his pearl-clarity but fleeting, ever so slippery. This fantastical, flickering outline slips away in the most familiar fashion, the only thing different that ectoplasmic green eating imprints on your retinas. You never see his cuts, but they ooze that same green, alien, unnatural. Even injured he’s something to lean away from. Even bleeding he’s a towering figure, a blinding, snapping star.

This is Daniel James Fenton: a boy.

These are his connections: a sister, a foil, a believer. Two friends-lovers.

All of the above: his orbit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's it! if you liked this fic, please do leave a comment. it means a lot.
> 
> thank you for reading!


End file.
